The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"If all possible scientific questions are answered, our problem is still not touched at all."

--Ludwig Wittgenstein

Welcome to the Neighborhood

A new portrait of the central Milky Way using infrared and X-ray photography, a composite with contributions from the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, and Chandra X-Ray Observatory. [Click on the photo to enlarge. Credit: NASA, ESA, SSC, CXC and STScl.] It's enough to make you wonder--which, it turns out, even the Vatican is doing, at their conference on whether there is other life in the universe. Could Galileo being orbiting in his grave?

The Hypocritical Oath

There's a war on Americans that has killed twice as many U.S. veterans in one year as were killed in Afghanistan since 2001. It's the war against universal health care.

A new Harvard Medical study finds that 2,200 vets under the age of 65 died last year because they didn't have health insurance.

This is only one item in the scandalous treatment of veterans. I'm not going to join in all the hyperbole about soldiers that's customary on Veterans Day. The military is not the only way to serve and protect, and heroism used to mean something more than the pious name given to every member. But the hypocrisy of a country that doesn't take care of its veterans, that skimps on care and allows huge loopholes in coverage, is simply disgusting.

But this is a specific instance of the war against universal health care now being waged, which even victimizes the veterans that the hypocritical patriot mouths will praise today. It's a war on the many--especially the least powerful--by the very powerful few, as most wars are.

It's a war that has already watered down even the strongest health care reform proposals currently being considered. But former President Clinton is right--something is better than nothing. If universal health care had become law in 1997, those veterans would not be casualities of this war, nor would the estimated 45,000 Americans who die each year because they have no health care coverage. And as baskeball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said Tuesday, as he revealed his serious medical condition that fortunately he can afford to have addressed, "It’s a just and noble cause to make health care available to everyone."

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience."

--Albert Einstein
painting: "The Boulevard" by Gino Severini

History

In a late night session, the House of Representatives passed the Obama-backed Democratic health care reform plan 220-215. As President Obama observed in an email, "Despite countless attempts over nearly a century, no chamber of Congress has ever before passed comprehensive health reform. This is history."

Democratic House members met earlier with President Obama, and Representative Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said afterwards, “This is an opportunity to do something as big as Social Security,” he added. “And me, personally, I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history.”

After meeting with Obama, some Democrats began a familiar chant: Fired Up! Ready to Go! Fired Up! Ready to Go!

Republicans offered their own bill, which was defeated, and attempted to disrupt the debate by shouting down Democratic speakers. Republican leadership guaranteed that no GOPers would vote for the bill, so they must have been surprised when one Republican did--Representative Ahn Cao of Louisiana, the first person born in Vietnam to be elected to Congress. He said in a statement: "I listened to the countless stories of Orleans and Jefferson Parish citizens whose health care costs are exploding — if they are able to obtain health care at all. Louisianans needs real options for primary care, for mental health care, and for expanded health care for seniors and children.”

TPM summarizes what the House and Senate bills contain. Among those voting against in the House was liberal Dennis Kucinich, who supports a single payer system. Some interesting quick reflections on that, and on the politics of the vote, here from Booman.

Update: The NYTimes adds some handy stuff: a point by point comparison of House and Senate bills, an interactive map of districts by who voted for and who against the House bill, plus a chart concerning the Democrats who voted against the House bill. Meanwhile, Josh Marshall sees the vote as historic--but even though he believes health care reform will be enacted, it could possibly lead to Democrats losing Congress in 2010, and/or the presidency in 2012. (But then the world ends in 2012 so it won't make any difference.)

Grand Entrance

In honor of the history-making White House Tribal Leaders Conference yesterday, which President Obama and tribal leaders hope is the beginning of a new era of justice and partnership, subject of the post below. "Grand Entrance" by Kenojuak Ashevak (Inuit.)

A Lasting Conversation

The President of the United States met with American Indian leaders from all 564 tribal nations on Thursday, at the conference he called. It was the first time--as the BBC pointed out--that a sitting President has ever held such a meeting.

The recognized tribes weren't the only ones represented, because problems of getting officially recognized is one of the issues discussed.

Several times President Obama made this point: "And I want to be clear about this: Today's summit is not lip service. We're not going to go through the motions and pay tribute to one another and then furl up the flags and go our separate ways. Today's sessions are part of a lasting conversation that's crucial to our shared future."

The shared past has been ugly, long past the well known history of slaughter, concentration camps and slavery in the 18th and 19th century, and the racism and exploitation of the 20th. Some members of Congress, such as Senator Ted Kennedy, and later President Clinton made some efforts to establish new federal policies, but such efforts died in the Bush administration, as corruption and exploitation again became more characteristic.

But as a candidate, Obama was the first since Robert Kennedy to actively campaign for Indian votes by engaging tribes and Native groups, and speaking to their issues. On Thursday, he could speak to these leaders with a record of having kept his major campaign promises to them, and he was honored for this effort. So the president of the National Congress of American Indians could say, "we respect you as a man of your word."

Throughout the day, cabinet secretaries and other federal officials listened to tribal leaders and their issues: the effects of the Climate Crisis on tribes in Alaska, the environmental destruction when reservations are used as toxic waste dumps, continuing issues of land and sovereignty, severe unemployment, and terrible health and education problems.

The Obama administration has already demonstrated its awareness by targeting money from the Recovery Act to Indian nations. In particular, recognizing that some of the better sites for solar and wind power projects are on Indian lands, the administration is interested in fostering clean energy projects. So are tribal leaders.

The President opened the conference, and handled this occasion with skill and style. He didn't suggest a Native genetic heritage, like the Cherokee blood that I've heard Indians say is the most common and meaningless claim. He spoke of a relationship that is taken seriously: he was adopted into the Crow Nation. Even though this can be a courtesy to flatter important people, it can have real meaning, depending on how seriously the parties take it.

And speaking of seriously, President Obama used a tool that Native peoples appreciate: humor. For example, after his remarks, Obama signed an executive order giving federal agencies 90 days to submit detailed plans on ways to improve their consultations with tribal leaders. He did so using 8 pens, which as is customary, would then be given to leaders. As he signed bits of his signature with each pen he told the audience, "this isn't as easy as it looks."

However, he may not have been prepared for the lengthy and almost ceremonial statements he got in the Q and A period, during which no Qs were asked. I recognize that, too, and I learned to love it.

President Obama returned at the end of the day to reiterate his resolve that this was a beginning and not an end to--at last--an attentive relationship between the U.S. government and the Indian nations. Unfortunately, the shootings at Fort Hood not only dominated the day's news but prevented the President from making his final remarks.

Here's a brief story from AFP, the New York Times account of the day, and USA Today. A transcript of Obama's remarks in the morning and the Q & A are here, in the Washington Post, and Reznet News has a story and video.

Shooting

I turned on the TV at about 145 Pacific time and heard the reports of gunshots and deaths at Fort Hood. Apparently the cable news outlets had been reporting the wildly varying information for awhile. Then the first official spokesperson for the base provided this information: 12 dead, 31 wounded with wounds varying greatly in severity, the shooter was killed by a civilian police officer, the incident took place in a building where troops were gathered as part of the processing for imminent deployment--at least some to Iraq and Afghanistan. Two suspects were also in custody--they and the shooter are U.S. Army, though the victims included civilian police.

Though this official was careful to say there was one shooter and two additional suspects being questioned, it took miliseconds for both Wolf Blitzer and Chris Matthews to begin referring to the three shooters. It may turn out to be the case, but it may also turn out to be that the two suspects didn't actually shoot. They may be guilty of nothing. It's more than sloppy reporting, it's bad reporting, with a hint of hysteria. It's what comes of employing people not to think but to shoot their mouths off. I've turned the TV off.

Update: By about 630 pm Pacific it was confirmed that indeed the two suspects were not shooters, and after questioning were released. However, the official report was also wrong in saying that the accused shooter was dead. A second press conference revealed he is alive, with multiple gunshot wounds, as is the person who first shot him, described as "a female first responder." Whether this misreporting was intentional or not is a question that is likely to be asked.

Update 2: The New York Times story about the alleged shooter, Major Nidal Hasan, corrects yet another bit of misreporting on cable news. CNN in particular reported that the FBI had looked into web postings Hasan made, about suicide bombings. The implication was that they should have realized he was trouble. But the Times emphasized (repeating it twice) that the Nidal Hasan who posted had not been definitively identified as Major Nidal Hasan. Kind of an important point.

The Times story also suggests a rationale for the apparently paradoxical fact that Hasan was a psychiatrist:

He had also more recently expressed deep concerns about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Having counseled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, first at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington and more recently at Fort Hood, he knew all too well the terrifying realities of war, said a cousin, Nader Hasan.

“He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy,” Mr. Hasan said. “He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there.”

This doesn't make the taking of innocent life any more rational, and certainly not justifiable, but it does link Hasan's expertise to the situation.

Seriously though, folks...

This is the guy who wants Death Panels? Whose health care plan is equivalent to the Holocaust? The new Hitler, the new Stalin, the unAmerican Anti-Christ? The media may eat it up, but the cognitive dissonance is clearly too much for the majority of Americans. A tumultuous and yet basically calmer year later, apart from an increasingly dangerous fringe. More on the year later theme in the post below.

A Year Later

The first November election after Barack Obama won the presidency had several races that the politicians and media watched for real and mostly imagined significance. The early morning after stories trumpeted Democratic defeats for governor of New Jersey (the incumbent lost) and Virginia (the Democratic incumbent wasn't running.) By the time Morning Joe begins fulminating, the GOPers will be crowing all over the place.

However, their glee might be tempered by a couple of House races where they lost badly, particularly the one in New York, where a Democrat won a Republican seat, for the first time in more than a century. This was the race where Rabid Right leaders endorsed the Conservative Party candidate over the Republican, who dropped out--and endorsed the Dem. The Conservative was still expected to win, but he sure didn't.

Inevitably there's the question of what this says about Obama. Looking at the polls, Kos said "nothing." Obama's support in Virginia and New Jersey is about the same as when he won those states, and in exit polls most voters said they weren't saying anything about Obama either way with their vote.

Later in the evening, Kos played a slightly different tune, attributing the low turnout among young voters to disenchantment with the lack of bold action. Earlier in the day I caught Chris Matthews railing against Netroots kids expecting that political change is as easy as "asking your mother to make you pancakes." So that's another argument that's bound to gas up the airwaves Wednesday.

Whatever each of them does or doesn't portend, a few off-year elections aren't going to change the dynamic for Obama. But how the perception game among pols plays out might, specifically in terms of pending legislation on healthcare and the Climate Crisis. If GOPers can project more strength and cast Obama as politically weaker, it could be trouble. However, GOPers feeling their oats are fairly reliable in their tendency to overplay their hand.

But what is important about a year later? We've forgotten the Great Recession--and how close we came to Great Depression II--even before the economy is actually healthy. That's remarkable. What isn't remarkable is all the hoo-haw about what Obama is and isn't doing, and particularly the inspiring speeches he's not making. I was only 16 or 17, but I remember the same hoo-haw about President Kennedy. He's such a great communicator, why isn't he doing more FDR style fireside chats? Etc. JFK may have been too skeptical, but he did understand timing, and nobody has been better at timing in recent years than Barack Obama. He waited until the right moment to address Congress on health care, and evidence is mounting that it was that moment that turned things around.

Sure, it's not done yet, and there's plenty of danger ahead. But that isn't the worst of it. What I find most appalling and most dangerous is the attempt to discredit and destroy the President. I understand where some of this is coming from. It's a brand of justice called revenge.

I saw it on a bumper sticker in front of me at a red light--surrounded by other Rabid Right slogans, it said something to the effect of: I'll respect your President exactly as much as you respected mine.

This is partly payback for what was said about G.W. Bush. And there's something to this: there was disdain, disrespect, however justified or not.

But the Rabid Right is much better at hate. Their leaders--including elected bigwig DC leaders-- aren't even pretending to restrain the haters. GOPers in Congress and possible presidential candidates fan the flames, as do ambitious media stars eager to cash in. They have inflated the rhetoric beyond reason. No longer even bothering with "socialized medicine," they've gone right to the inflammatory "socialism."

Was Bush closer to being a fascist than Obama is a socialist? I'd say yes, but someone could probably make the case that these propositions are equally wrong. I can recite ways in which Bush earned disdain (his appointment by the Supreme Court, Iraq, Katrina, torture, etc.) And I can show how a lot of this extreme opposition is delusional. So the equivalence breaks down, though obviously not everyone thinks so.

Is the racial hatred of Obama more toxic than the disdain for Bush as a spoiled rich kid? I'd say yes, but somebody on the other side might make a case that they're the same in some way.

What I don't think is debatable is the greater potential for violence now--there is a difference between gun-toting and civil disobedience. And again, GOPer leaders are eagerly embracing and encouraging the vocabulary of the haters, as well as their campaign contributions. They are extreme enough that columnist Joe Klein, not exactly a roaring leftist, accuses some of them of sedition.

Here's what I worry about, beyond the very real worry over President Obama's safety, and what will happen to the country if there is even an assassination attempt. We have a huge and powerful military, a military-industrial complex, constrained only by one civilian authority, the President. Anything that undermines his legitimacy and authority, threatens his control over the military specifically, and the military-industrial complex.

The relative power of the military today is an open question. Maybe they aren't as powerful as they once were, in the fifties and sixties, when even the Secretary of Defense admitted they were itching to start a thermonuclear war. But Obama may need all his authority to keep the military in control, especially if he makes decisions counter to their wishes in Afghanistan.

There's a delicate line between criticizing, even castigating the man who is president, and damaging the presidency and the ability of the President to fulfill constitutional roles and duties. But I don't think the Rabid Right is aware of that, or particularly cares. That's scary in itself.

On the plus side, most of the American electorate is being decidedly turned off by this rabid rhetoric. Still, it's a volatile situation, in a country where civilization itself seems increasingly vulnerable.

Yes We Can

Here on what one North Coast blogger links to as "Bill's Obama Blog," let's celebrate and remember another election night one year ago, with this terrific video by Jed Lewison. Note Obama's election night speech, warning that this was just the beginning of change, that it would be hard and require much of us, but as long as we breathe, we hope. A year later--only one year later-- it's good to remind ourselves of the magnitude of what happened, which was and remains a reason to hope that the future can still be saved.

The latest from a writer who has been thinking through our era out loud for nearly 40 years, always with an eye to the future--see the post below. (The cover makes it appropriate for a Halloween post, I guess. The Eve of the Dark Ages.)

Bookmark: Self and Society

Self and Society: Studies in the Evolution of Culture
by William Irwin Thompson
Imprint Academic 184 pages

Self and Society is an oddly vanilla title for the guy who wrote At the Edge of History, Evil and World Order, Coming Into Being, The Americanization of Nature and The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light. William Irwin Thompson burst on the scene in the early 1970s as a counter-cultural intellectual and later a boundary-crossing New Age synthesist of history and future, art and science, culture and psyche, media and Gaia. For almost forty years, Thompson has been one of those few writers and speakers that an intelligent and otherwise eclectic and self-defined public looks to for illuminating ideas about what’s really going on in this mixed-up world, and therefore what’s to come. This new and expanded edition of Self and Society is a cumulative summary of his latest thinking.

This book expresses his transition from cultural historian to cultural ecologist, he writes. He spells out this personal journey in more detail in talks recorded in Reimagination of the World (Bear & Company). He elsewhere refers to himself as primarily a poet, and on hiatus in Europe, reimagined his own career while writing a science fiction novel, Islands Out of Time (Bear & Co.) His foreword to that book asserts that character and story are old fashioned delusions (“People who believe in egos write novels with characters.”) Maybe I’ve got a warped sensibility, but I enjoyed this novel for its characters and story.

Though he continues to find guidance in that Old Master, Marshall McLuhan, Thompson adopted ideas and vocabularies from chaos theory and the new physics, as well as the new biology of Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock (Thompson edited two anthologies, Gaia: A Way of Knowing and Gaia 2: Emergence, both from Lindisfarne Press.) Maybe it’s just because I’m not clear on the significance of such concepts as “attractors,” but the vocabulary sometimes gets in the way, and sounds like jargon. Still, Thompson’s use of these new approaches in science is far from the trendy appropriations (and distortions) of some popular New Age authors. They guide him into some profound possibilities.

Though sometimes maddeningly sketchy or abstruse, his ideas are bracing, especially for those immersed in the supposed intellectual mainstream. For example, though he writes about physical and cultural evolution, he finds a lot of trendy evolutionary psychology reductive and misleading. But in this brief review I want to concentrate on what he sees as today’s nascent patterns, moving into the future.

Thompson sees the growth of a planetary culture over the past century, still defining itself. It involves the arts, belief systems and cultural values as well as economics, politics and science. But this is not some gauzy New Age vision. “So when I am writing about the emergence of a new post-religious spirituality that is resonant with science” (exemplifed by the Dalai Lama)...”I am perfectly aware that I am living in the ‘sunset effect’ time of Osama bin Laden and Jerry Falwell.” It's in this sunset period that reactionary ideologies seem most fierce, if not most powerful.

Cultural transformation is complicated not only by conflict but by the tendency to “become what we hate,” (for instance, torturers.) Thompson concludes that “if we’re lucky” we may avoid a downslide into a dark age “that could last for centuries” before the new “noetic” future might emerge. That luck would be in avoiding self-annihilation by any combination of ecological and economic catastrophe and weapons of mass destruction.

At times he sees this “luck” as very unlikely, and seems resigned to a civilizational apocalypse. Even in our gigabite-giddy, electronic denial, he’s hardly alone in this analysis, especially in the darkening decades from Reagan through G.W. Bush.

But in his last chapters--blog entries about the 2008 presidential campaign-- his hopes are raised by the election of Barack Obama. Of Obama's speech in Chicago's Grant Park on election night, Thompson writes: “he stood in the moment in which yesterday becomes tomorrow as an entire epoch comes to an end...So yesterday is an age ago, and if tomorrow is filled with new challenges and crises, at least the whole world can now look to them with a new face.”

Where the Marx Brothers Got Their Material

Sure, Duck Soup is silly. But...here's a 'this day in history' note from wikipedia, verbatim and in full: 1268:Conradin, the last Duke of Swabia, was beheaded in Naples after failing to reclaim Sicily for the House of Hohenstaufen from Charles of Anjou." Now class, who was the first Duke of Swabia? How far is Swabia from Freedonia? And who was Charles of Anjou pere? Any other new business? Sorry, that's old business now.

Speaking of old business, the My Little Blogosphere links are still not registering new posts on American Dash, where the NFL has progressed through the 6th week and the seventh, with appropriate posts (mostly about the Steelers of course)... As for the World Series, Margaret's brother is a Yankees fan and he could use a win, plus growing up in Pittsburgh Pirates country I never developed any affection for the Philadelphia Phillies. But there's something about watching the Yankees lose...

Harvest

After a winter-preview rain the day before, yesterday was sunny but with a strong cold wind. These pears are gone now, and I picked the last apples yesterday. What passes for winter here is on its way. Pretty good harvest, though, for the first year these trees have been out of pots and in the ground. But the mystery is, why aren't I seeing the hummingbirds as I used to?

The Climate Crisis Future

Maybe it's hard to think through the prospects of a Climate Crisis future. People seem to leap from "nah, it won't happen" or "nah, we'll fix it before it gets bad" to "we're doomed! I don't want to think about it!"

But here's part of what we're not thinking about. As Climate Crisis-related problems and phenomena grow, governments and entire societies will be spending more and more time and money on dealing with those problems and phenomena. Eventually it's at least possible if not pretty likely that a lot of society, a lot of life, will reorganize to deal wih them.

This links you to a couple of interactive map that begins to graphically illustrate the landscape of that future. And then there are the same old stories about the consequences, that seem to run in a rotation of repeating studies, like this reinteration of the relationship of hotter climate with more disease and less food and water, with the Washington Post's shocking headline, Ailing Planet Seen As Bad for Human Health. How many times do we have to hear this before it starts to sink in?

Another consequence of dealing with the Climate Crisis problems is that the resources to do a lot of other stuff will be less, much less or just won't be there. That's going to be difficult, but it may have its up side. It's is kind of why I don't worry so much about gene-designed humans or the Internet version of a 1984 total survelliance culture. Because they will cost too much, and the money won't be there.

Neither will the energy. People are virtually blind to the cost in energy of the virtual worlds of the Internet, of GPS, cell phones and BlackBerries and all the other interlocking electronics. But it is huge. And the infrastructure is pretty fragile.

The energy cost of massive survelliance alone is incredible. In James Banford's revealing look at the dubious recent history of U.S. "intelligence," he notes that a new data-mining National Security Agency facility in Salt Lake City will use "the same amount of energy as every house in Salt Lake City combined."

So nobody's geeky toys are going to be worth much, especially if we don't get a better and greener energy infrastructure. It's the heroic struggle of the age, and President Obama was out there on Tuesday, standing in front of solar collectors and reminding everyone that his Recovery Act stimulus includes about three and a half billion bucks to modernize the country's energy grid, matched and exceeded to the tune of nearly five billion bucks from the private sector. This is small stuff so far that can make a big difference. It's a start. (Update: Another link to NPR report on other administration announcements.)

President Obama also used the occasion to assert that consensus is building for a climate bill in Congress, and a climate treaty in Copenhagen. He is using the true and often effective strategy of making this a fight between the future and the past. You can say a lot of things about the Obama administration so far, but it's hard to dispute that symbolically in just about every way, this guy stands for the future. He's out there trying hard to make it happen. Keep hope alive.

Emerson for the Day

"I am sane only when I have risen above my common sense, when I do not take the foolish view of things which is commonly taken, when I do not live for the low ends for which men commonly live. Wisdom is not common. To what purpose have I senses, if I am thus absorbed in affairs? My pulse must beat with Nature."

H.D. Thoreau

Journal 1851

[Image: Nebula ngc 6599 Sagitarius]

Yes We Can

On the day that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the consensus Senate healthcare bill will contain a public option (with a state opt-out provision), supported by statements from progressive Senators, the conservative Max Baucus and the White House, there's this report from Reuters:

"The U.S. healthcare system is just as wasteful as President Barack Obama says it is, and proposed reforms could be paid for by fixing some of the most obvious inefficiencies, preventing mistakes and fighting fraud, according to a Thomson Reuters report released on Monday.

The U.S. healthcare system wastes between $505 billion and $850 billion every year, the report from Robert Kelley, vice president of healthcare analytics at Thomson Reuters, found.

"America's healthcare system is indeed hemorrhaging billions of dollars, and the opportunities to slow the fiscal bleeding are substantial," the report reads."

As for the opt-out provision, it doesn't hurt the principle (no individual mandate without public option) or very likely the practice. With the public option pretty popular now, and likely to be even more popular once it is working, it's going to be politically difficult for states to opt out, and will tend to marginalize the Rabid Right even more.

But key to that is getting the reforms working, and some Dems are looking to move up the date for the reforms to go into effect, from 2013 to next year.

Breaking News! He's Still Pretty Popular

Sure, the enthusiasm isn't what it was during the election, which could be because it's not during the election. And people do disagree with stuff you do, once you've done something. But for all the negative spin on poll numbers, there's Obama at the percentage he got in 2008 or higher, and these numbers from Public Policy Polling: President Obama's approval rating with people who didn't vote for him is 14% and his disapproval rating with people who voted for him is 6%."So he's won over twice as many people as he's lost since he got elected. Who in the national media is going to write that story? Not bad for someone whose support is supposedly falling apart."

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

""Yes, I suppose it was hard to talk about, because it seemed like it broke down in one of two ways, because people were asking: Is it too late or not? And it seemed like this:

If it isn't too late, we don't have to do anything.

On the other hand, if it is too late, we don't have to do anything.

So either way, don't do anything. That was the problem with that way of putting the question. What we came to realize was that it was a false problem or a question put the wrong way, because there was never going to be a too late. It was always going to stay a question of better or worse. It was more a question of, okay, how fast can we act? How much can we save? Those are the questions we should be asking."

Blog reply by "President Phil Chase" in Sixty Days and Counting

by Kim Stanley Robinson [Sculpture "The Journey" by Luke lksilktaaryuk)

350 Climate Action: Fifty Days and Counting

(Yeah, I kind of stole my own title from earlier in the week. This is now posted at DKos to massive indifference, and DK Green Roots. DKos wouldn't accept most of the links, though. And for some reason, this blog won't accept the proper paragraph spacing towards the end of the post. So Internet, baby, I give up.) Wait--I fixed this blog at least! Hah!

Earlier this week, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown emphasized the crucial importance of completing an effective global agreement to address the Climate Crisis at the upcoming Copenhagen meeting:

"If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement, in some future period, can undo that choice. So we should never allow ourselves to lose sight of the catastrophe we face if present warming trends continue."

Referring to the time between now and the Copehagen meetings, the BBC report began: "Gordon Brown said negotiators had 50 days to save the world from global warming." Fifty days--and counting, I thought. And that reminded me of Kim Stanley Robinson's Climate Crisis trilogy, and the last volume titled Sixty Days and Counting. Some might think this a frivilous association. But in the midst of the scientific, political and economic considerations in the diaries today, I want to take a step back, and honor the equal need for perspective and imagination.

Fiction can focus on the human elements that often go missing in other discussions. Making up stories can be a reality check. Fiction can develop the problems in depth and over time, and it can propose and test solutions. For the kind of crisis we face, it is especially valuable as a tool for perspective.

Robinson's trilogy is a good example. It is set in an unspecified near future. As the final volume begins, a Democrat has just been elected President after a familiar-sounding Republican administration. President Phil Chase is fictional, a Vietnam vet like John Kerry, but with a disposition more like Barack Obama. He might also be characterized as a 21st century California athletic but very savvy and somewhat philosophical FDR.

In the first two novels, the Climate Crisis has become dramatically evident: Washington is temporarily flooded, an island nation is completely and permanently inundated, and the Gulf Stream has shut down, causing extreme cold in the U.S. So the Chase Administration has to deal with both parts of the Climate Crisis: the effects in the present, and the causes of even worse effects in the future.

That's the perspective that we need to maintain, particularly as the effects become more pronounced and less deniable. We have to keep both in mind, and not get suckered into a political war over which one we will address. We can't get caught in our own kind of Climate Crisis denial: concentrating so much on the efforts to save the far future through reducing greenhouse gases etc. that we deny the need to prepare for nearer term consequences. We can't get caught in a self-destructive either/or. We must do both.

This is the most complex kind of crisis humanity has ever had to consciously deal with. The Climate Crisis involves long lag-time between cause and effect. It involves "tipping points" in which effects themselves become causes, as they prime positive feedback loops, or start crashes and cascades.

Because of lag time, even if we do cut greenhouse gases in the present, bad things may still happen for some time to come. "The continuity effect, as they called it, and a nasty problem to contemplate," Robinson writes. Right now we may be feeling the effects of greenhouse gases mixing in the atmosphere of 50 to 100 years ago. It's a lag time measured in decades.

We have two Climate Crises, calling for two strategies. They can be described in different ways: the short term and the long term, the effects and the causes, or as I categorize the tasks: the "Fix It" efforts to fix the effects in the present moving forward, and the "Stop It" efforts aimed at saving the future from even worse catastrophe.

Mark Hertsgaard has been warning about this for years. The American Association for the Advancement of Science noted that "We need an aggressive research, development and deployment effort to transform the existing and future energy systems of the world away from technologies that emit greenhouse gases," but also that "it is essential that we develop strategies to adapt to ongoing changes and make communities more resilient to future changes. The growing torrent of information presents a clear message: we are already experiencing global climate change. It is time to muster the political will for concerted action."

There are efforts now to deal with both crises. As representatives of several nations met in London this week for talks preliminary to Copenhagen, there was a conference in Vancouver focused on preparing for the near future of climate-caused disasters, which may well characterize the next several generations. That AAAS statement from a few years ago uses the word "resilience," and it has since become a kind of watchword among some of those preparing for the future. And so the Vancouver meeting was called the "Resilient People + Climate Change Conference." It was mostly concerned with psychological and cultural resilience, a necessary if not sufficient emphasis.

We're used to crises that are happening before our eyes. It takes imagination to anticipate effects, as well as the will to face the consequences already happening elsewhere in the world, and to grasp the patterns of what is happening around us.

It takes imagination to understand that the Climate Crisis is two crises, and we can't be so intent on one part of the problem that we neglect the other part. That's a political as well as a policy peril. Another fictionist and futurist, Bruce Sterling, has been warning of this (as well as a near future in which the Climate Crisis dominates everything, including the world economy.) If Republicans suddenly pivot away from total denial to demanding total concentration on what's inelegantly called "adaptation" or "remediation," (words that only bureaucrats can love) then efforts towards changes to save the long-term future will again be endangered.

Though we haven't yet seen the kind of large-scale dramatic effects Robinson writes about in his trilogy, this fiction does in a sense rehearse our future. The Climate Crisis has begun, and no matter what we do, the lives of several generations to come--including people living now--are going to be affected, and probably changed more than we can otherwise imagine.

Fiction is not only about issues and events, it is about people. First of all, the people who must deal with the problems. They can't afford to choose one crisis or the other--they must confront both.

Fiction can suggest how people can deal with change, how they can themselves change, and yet go on with their lives. Fiction can provide reassurance that this is possible. This last novel of the trilogy, for example, ends like a classic Shakespearian comedy: with marriages.

Fiction like this can give us a vision of a better future we work towards in the present, as in President Phil Chase's goal of a permaculture: "a culture that can be sustained permanently," with meaningful work, education, and health care for all. "Taking care of the Earth and its miraculous biological splendor will then become the long-term work of our species."

The title of this last book in Robinson's trilogy comes from the Chase administrations'plan to turn the government towards confronting the Climate Crisis in its first sixty days. But soon Chase realizes, "It's like our first sixty days never ended, but only keeps rolling over. It's like sixty days and counting all the time."

It's fifty days and counting all the time. Every day is to going to be Climate Action Day.

Climate Action Day

Today is the International Day of Climate Action: Some 5200 events in 181 countries to call for strong action to confront the Climate Crisis. Check out 350.org to find an event near you (and to see some great photos.) I missed change.org's Blog Action Day on climate, but not this one: in addition to thousands of other bloggers, I'll be one of 16 slated to blog on the Climate Crisis, one every half hour, to be posted on Daily Kos and DK Green Roots as well as our own blogs, organized by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse. My slot is 6:30 pm Pacific. See you then.

[graphic: "The Edge" by Susan Point (Coast Salish.)

Troubling (with Less Troubling Update)

I mostly ignore reports on who is saying what in negotiations, since these reports tend to be contradicted. But I am troubled by this latest report that the White House is pushing back against Majority Leader Reid's efforts to include a public option (with opt-out) in the Senate healthcare bill.

To me it's one thing for the White House to back a bill that comes out of the Senate but doesn't have a public option, and quite another to oppose a Senate bill that does have a public option, because (reportedly) Senator Olympia Snowe opposes it. Especially since the report also says that Reid is closing in on the 60 votes he needs to stifle a fillibuster.

I hope this report is wrong, but it is troubling.

Update: Later reporting suggests that the White House was concerned about Reid's vote count--they want something to pass the Senate, and are focused on the Conference Committee between House and Senate versions for the final outcome. On a conference call a few hours ago, President Obama said this:

" Conference is where these differences will get ironed out. And that's where my bottom lines will remain: Does this bill cover all Americans? Does it drive down costs both in the public sector and the private sector over the long-term. Does it improve quality? Does it emphasize prevention and wellness? Does it have a serious package of insurance reforms so people aren't losing health care over a preexisting condition? Does it have a serious public option in place? Those are the kind of benchmarks I'll be using. But I'm not assuming either the House and Senate bills will match up perfectly with where I want to end up. But I am going to be insisting we get something done."

First Family

An official First Family portrait, by Annie Leibovitz.

Dreaming Up Daily Quote

On President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize:

"I won it unexpectedly and he won it unexpectedly. America means a lot [to the world] and will continue to do so for a long time... That's why [we have to] support a president of such stature, who gave his own country and the world such a strong push forward. And it's already showing real effects. That's honorable."

Mikhail Gorbachev

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"We are told that when Jehovah created the world he saw that it was good. What would he say now?"

G.B. Shaw (photo credit)

Fifty Days and Counting

While America struggles to come a little closer to joining the civilized world on universal health care, UK leaders are focused on the civilized world's survival. Prime Minister Brown warned on Monday that the nations of the world have 50 days to get their act together on the Climate Crisis negotiations in Copenhagen, and if action isn't taken, Brown painted a graphic picture of what Europe is in for--more frequent and more intense killer heat waves, flooding and disease:

"If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement, in some future period, can undo that choice. So we should never allow ourselves to lose sight of the catastrophe we face if present warming trends continue."

After India, China and Brazil made news with their at least rhetorical support for significant action, UK leaders (including Prince Charles) are trying to broker a global deal. To that end, representatives of 17 nations held preliminary talks in London this week, and at least one Brit official pronounced himself "more hopeful" that a Copenhagen agreement can be reached.

Scientists in the UK have been the most outspoken (in the English speaking world at least) about the basic threat to human civilization of a runaway Climate Crisis, and Gordon Brown--otherwise not very popular in the UK--is focused on the issue.

This is the continuing story of trying to prevent the worst--what I've called the "Stop It" half of the Climate Crisis efforts. There is also increasing attention to the "Fix It" half, which unfortunately is starting to go by the bloodless misnomers of "adaptation" and "mitigation," words that only bureaucrats can love. But more on that anon.

Dept. of Not Really Great News

A new internal Congressional Research Service report and government sources say there are an unprecedented number of death threats against President Obama -- and that the Secret Service is insufficiently funded and staffed to deal with them. Original story at Boston Globe; summary with link at TMP.

Perspectives

In this culture of brief global explosions and temporary ripples that disappear in a day or a week, the value of the individual perspective grows, especially the breadth and acuity of perspective over time. And once that individual dies, the perspective dies as well, except as record and retrospect.

This thought forces itself on me after months of fitfully reading John Leonard's last collection of essays, Lonesome Rangers (although there may be a posthumous collection of later work, I suspect.) Leonard died a year or so ago, after actively writing about books, television and other cultural matters since the early 70s. The connections he made, the depths and breadth of his insights, are invaluable. And unique.

I've also been reading some G.B. Shaw, and watching his plays on DVD. In his plays and prefaces and commentary, Shaw provided a unique voice, and still provides a unique perspective on his times, which stretched from the late 19th century to the mid-20th. There's been no one like him since. Looking into articles on the immense changes happening with blinding speed involving computer technologies, in The Best Technology Writing 2009 (Yale), I pause to wonder what Shaw or Leonard would have made of all this. Something no one else has thought of, and probably something more than anyone else has thought of. Maybe something we need.

Three Little Swine and How They Flu

They found swine flu in U.S. swine: three little pigs at the Minnesota State Fair tested positive for the H1M1 virus, the first in the U.S. Time to panic? Maybe for the pigs. Because the swine likely caught the swine flu from humans.